Date Lab: Is text messaging evil?

About the daters:

Desired superpower ...

(Courtesy of the daters)

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Scott: The ability to wade through a bureaucracy. No, that’s beyond impossible. I’d go with something like the video game “The Sims,” where I could “click” on people in the real world and learn all about them.

Catherine: Teleportation. I’m impatient and have little tolerance for slow people, large crowds or traffic.

Dating life as a TV show ...

Scott: Every girl I dated wanted to settle down with me right away. This has been good for relationships, but bad for rebound periods and tough in D.C., where so many people would rather date their jobs. I think we’ll call our show ... “The Keeper.”

Catherine: Girl next door trades settling down for moving up the education ranks, but not without heartbreak and hilarity along the way.

Your type ...

Scott: I’m a sucker for the plain but extremely cute all-American girl, especially women with long, straight, blond hair. I play a lot of sports and tend to prefer athletic women, especially runners. My mom, grandmas and exes have all loved
to shop and I’ve gained an appreciation of fashion, so hopefully she’ll have a good sense of style. Height doesn’t matter much, but ideally my date should be comfortable to wear her favorite three- [to] four-inch heels with me, so it would be nice if she were three [to] four inches shorter than me (I’m 5-10).

Catherine: Taller than me, athletic build, easy on the eyes. Has wide-ranging knowledge and interests and likes to have intelligent conversations about life philosophies, science, art, music, anything. Kind, respectful, open-minded.

About the date ...

7:30 p.m., Ristorante Tosca, downtown

Scott: I’ve been in a decent amount of relationships now. I can put the first date into perspective: Sometimes it goes great, and then life happens and something comes up, and the second date never happens; or it goes badly, and then you decide you’ll still try, and it works out great.

Catherine: I haven’t had any serious relationships in the two years that I’ve been in D.C. I’ve dated a fair amount; it’s all been online dating. I was the first one [there]. Because I was around the corner, I couldn’t see anyone coming toward me; all of a sudden, [Scott] appeared. I was pleasantly surprised. He is my type. I tend to go for darker guys, dark hair, dark eyes, darker complexion. He’s probably a couple inches taller than me. I’m 5-8; as long as he’s taller than me, that’s fine. I stood up to shake his hand, but he went in for a hug. I usually am not someone that hugs on a blind date. But it was fine, you know.

Scott: My family’s really welcoming. We immediately [treat people] like they’re part of the family, so I hugged her, and she kind of responded like, “Oh!” She had these pretty brown eyes and smile. I noticed she was wearing flats, which kind of rubbed me the wrong way. Then, it turned out she was pretty tall, so I guess that was probably why. But I thought she should have dressed better for the venue and the occasion.

Catherine: He [told me he] was from Michigan. ... I was like, “Oh, you’re from Ann Arbor! I went to grad school there.” That was definitely a cool connection. We talked about growing up, travel, movies. There’s a couple of [surprising] things [I learned about him], but they would be off the record. We actually came up with a code of prefacing a topic with, like, on the record, off the record.